How to change keyboard in vMA5?

[Horinius]

This post is actually a follow-up to my thread at http://communities.vmware.com/thread/318603 but I think I'd better start a new discussion.

First, a little summary:

In vMA 4.1, it was possible to press any key to interrupt the automatied boot (blue screen), enter 'a' to modify kernel string and add 'single' at the end of the string and at boot up, run nano /etc/sysconfig/keyboard to change the keyboard.

But in vMA 5.0, it is no longer possible to do so!  So, what could we do?  This is particularly troublesome for non-English keyboard users since VMware engineers now require a stronger password policy but how are we supposed to enter a GOOD password if we can "see" what we are typing?

VMware should really send its engineers to internationalisation courses and make them write the following passage five times a day:

• English is only one language in the world
• At most only 15% of the world's computer users are using English keyboard

[JoseMesquita]

Hello Horinius,

I managed to change the KB settings in vMA 5.0.0.0 Build 472630 a follows:

1. Login locally as vi-admin;

2. Find the name of the correct KB mapping, depending on your country and keyboard type (ie, Qwerty or other one). For example, for a QWERTY portuguese keyboard, I did:

ls /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty

and took note of the name "pt-latin1.map.gz" from the listing.

2. Edit the KB configuration and change it to the desired country and keyboard mapping:

sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/keyboard

then find the row starting with the statement KEYTABLE="us.map.gz", and replace the original content with the new keyboad table name;

in my case, I changed it to KEYTABLE="pt-latin1.map.gz";

save the file and reboot.

Also, if You choose to access the vMA using SSH remote access, for example from puTTY, your keyboard should work fine, without the need to modify the local keyboard table as described above.

Jose Mesquita

Senior Consultant at V2S Lisbon

VMware VCP, VCAP-DCA, and VCI instructor.

[Horinius]

You don't understand the problem here.  When you wrote "1. Login locally as vi-admin", you assumed that you already have a working password.  But what I'm talking is even before that.

I was talking about the very very first moment when the stupid vMA asked us to provide a password.

[lamw]

Hi Horninus,

This is still possible with vMA 5, when you deploy a new vMA 5 (I just deployed the latest 5.0.0.2) release and if you watch the screen carefully, you'll still be able to go into "single" user to modify any settings before the appliance goes into the password change screen. I just did this and the default password on vMA 5.0.0.2 is vmware. I suspect the screen on your system is just flashing but and hence you're already into the boot sequence and the boot scripts.

[Horinius]

The attached image is the very first screen I see (vma 5 and 5.0.0.2)

I had tried tried several times to go into this damned "single" mode without success.  It's not funny to guess something we have no idea what to start with!

And I'm always blocked by this stupid password complexity at the start of every deployment.  Every time I have to try up to at least 5 times to get a good password --- if I manage to remember what I type without knowing the real characters I have typed.

Yes, a lot of people are fed up with this excessive password complexity.  I've found this article that I think I have to share with others:

http://v-reality.info/2011/08/how-to-fix-vma-5-0-password-complexity-issue/

And I have to add that without an English keyboard in front of me, it's hard to know where the "!" and "#" are.  So I had to Google an English keyboard image.  Really stupid

[lamw]

understand your frustration, but I can confirm this does in fact work for vMA 5.0.0.2. What happens when you hit "e" it should take you into the edit mode and select the line that has "kernel" and then hit "e" to edit and specify "single" at the end. After that, you can hit "b" to boot using the new option.

A few things I would recommend:

1) If you have not tried this, I would recommend adding this http://kb.vmware.com/kb/196 this has bitten myself and other folks and it's hard to see when you intiailly setup the password as you can't actually see the keys you're entering. It never hurts to have this

2) Have you tried to increase the delay in bootup? I just deployed vMA 5.0.0.2 on a GA build of ESXi 5.0 and I'm able to get to the menu to edit the boot option to get into single user mode. So this is possible

Of course, another method is just to file up knoppix and mount the image and change the password in /etc/shadow or even changing the keyboard type.

Below are screenshots:

[Horinius]

OK, I'm now in the prompt asking for "root password for login".  What is that?

[lamw]

great! As I mentioned in an earlier reply, the default password is "vmware"

[Horinius]

OK, thank you.  I'll look into this matter later.